How to Talk About the Stolen Nude Photos of Jennifer Lawrence and Others

Yesterday the Internet struck a major victory for exactly the kind of sexism we should all be ashamed of, when some guy stole a bunch of celebrity photos and posted them.

Short version: A lone perpetrator or group masterminded some Gone in 60 Seconds-style heist of hundreds of alleged celebrity nude photos. In an event Reddit later coined "The Fappening" (to "fap," in Internet lingo, is to pleasure oneself), they were leaked to the public en masse. Some of them have already been confirmed as authentic by the subjects and their publicists, with others denying.

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Early discussion seems to point the finger at iCloud security, saying that Apple's system was the one hacked. There's not yet an official explanation, and it's possible that there was more than one source.

If it hasn't started to sound sick to you yet, consider this: At the time of this writing, more than 40,000 people were sitting on the Reddit update page where users were sharing — in real time, mind you — their findings, new albums, and amateur "confirmations."

At some point women started finding out about it, and reacting.

Some with horror:

Knowing those photos were deleted long ago, I can only imagine the creepy effort that went into this. Feeling for everyone who got hacked.

What does it say that there isn't more shock about this? Why are we less outraged than it should be? Because it's happened before: People get ahold of things they shouldn't have, and it goes viral, and we talk about it.

Maybe there's a solution in talking about it differently. There are some things we can change this time, right now, and it might help.

1. Don't call this guy a hero, or even a hacker.

This isn't the movie War Games and no one accidentally stumbled on information the world needs to see. This isn't some pimple-faced loner exposing security problems in software. Some guy out there spent hours examining private data and stealing a stranger's most intimate moments to share on the Internet for notoriety. Yeah, a real class act. No, he's essentially a rapist.

2. This isn't a "lesson" about why not to take nude photos.

The problem is not that someone took personal pictures, or that they weren't "secure" enough. That's the same conversation that places blame on rape victims and not their attackers. This was and should be talked about like any act of sexism and violence.

3. Stop calling it The Fappening, Christmas, or anything else that implies it's a gift.

The elbow rubbing about spank-bank material isn't just creepy. It's dehumanizing. Photos distance us from the person out there right now crying on Labor Day asking, "How could someone do this?" They did it because they saw an object, not a person, in those files.

But that's just a drop in the bucket. It's not going to help the celebrities victimized this weekend. What's really the right way to talk about this?

Not at all.

If this were a friend or colleague's private life being unwillingly, publicly shared, we'd all like to think we would delete the e-mail so we can look her in the eye the next day. The same should be the case here. Delete them if you have them, stop searching for more, and give these people so little attention that they'll move onto something else for attention, like posting cat pictures.

And yes, this is more "talking about it," so let's end the conversation right there.